Developer Guide

Setting up your development environment

Get Eclipse

1. Download and install the latest version of Eclipse
1. Go to the eclipse download page and download the latest Eclipse for RCP/Plug-in Developers
2. Unzip it to a sensible location like /Applications/Eclipse
3. Start it
   

Get the Fritzing code

1. Install the subversion client "Subclipse"
   
1. Access the Eclipse Update Manager under Help > Software Updates > Find and Install..
   
2. Add a new remote update site for Subclipse at http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.2.x
3. Start the search and select and install the "Subclipse Plugin" (you don't need the "Integrations")
4. Restart Eclipse
   
2. Checkout the Fritzing source code
1. Add a new project through File > New > Other.. > SVN > Checkout Projects from SVN
   
2. Add http://fritzing.googlecode.com/svn as the SVN repository location
   
3. Browse to /trunk/fritzing, select Fritzing and check it out as a project
   
4. Do the same for Fritzing.diagram and Fritzing.edit
   
3. Switch back to the Java perspective
   

Install the necessary Eclipse Plugins

1. Go to the Eclipse Update Manager again
   
2. This time, from the "Europa Discovery Site" you need the following:
   (If any of these don't show up in the list, you probably already have them installed. In this case, you might wanna try to update them to the latest version.)
   
1. Models and Model Development
   
1. Graphical Modeling Framework
   Click on "Select Required" to resolve conflicts
2. Enabling Features
1. EMF Validation Framework OCL Integration
   
3. Graphical Editing Framework
1. Graphical Editing Framework SDK
4. Java Development
1. Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment
3. Install all and restart Eclipse
   

Building and Running

1. Use the supplied product definition to run Fritzing
1. Open the fritzing.product file in the root of the Fritzing project
2. Under Testing, click "Launch an Eclipse application"
3. ..and that should launch Fritzing
   
2. This creates a run configuration named fritzing.product. From now on, you can use this to run Fritzing.
   

Submitting your Changes

For the beginning, we would be happy if you just sent us your updated files via E-Mail or add them as an attachment to the issue tracker. If you become really serious, we'll later on be happy to grant you commit rights for the repository.

Resources

Due to the super-sized frameworks we're building on, it will be helpful to do some reading. Here are some good resources to get you started: